The detection of movements and/or a position of an object is particularly important in the health sector. Here, it is particularly important to keep lying patients moving unsafely without assistance safe from harm due to falling out of the bed, and to ensure the correct positioning of means that are sometime used for preventing falling, such as, for example, bed rails. Moreover, it has to be ensured that medical devices attached to a patient, such as, for example, body sensors, respiratory masks and the like, are positioned correctly in order for them to work properly.
To address these issues, patients may be monitored frequently by nursery staff. However, this imposes a huge workload on the nursery staff of a health care facility. Moreover, a sufficiently frequent monitoring can usually not be guaranteed for patients at their home, in particular when they live alone.
Therefore, there is a need for an automated monitoring. Moreover, such an automated monitoring should avoid disturbances of the patients to the largest possible extent.
U.S. 2006/0171560 relates to a system for locating and tracking an object, particularly a patient, using a camera array. In this system, the object is provided with markings, which are recorded via the camera array and which are extracted from the recordings in order to monitor their locations. The system determines the spatial position of the object on the basis of the locations of the markings. Thus, the system particularly allows for an automated monitoring of an object. However, the system tracks all movements of the object resulting in a movement of the markings. Thus, in case the object is a patient, the system may affect the patient's privacy.